Stacy D. Phillips

Blank Rome has taken big steps to expand its family law practice, and at the center of that campaign is Phillips.

Before joining the firm in 2016, Phillips helmed her own shop – the family law boutique Phillips Lerner ALC – for 26 years. At the time she joined alongside three other Phillips Lerner attorneys, Blank Rome management said the acquisitions positioned the firm among the leading matrimonial and family law practices in the country.

Phillips said it didn’t take long for her to settle into her new arrangement, and with the firm’s Los Angeles office recently expanding its family law practitioner count from five to 10, things are only getting busier.

“I’ve been working with their matrimonial group for most of my life,” Phillips said. “It’s all been great, and it’s given me a larger venue to support my partners.”

Phillips said she got into family law to help clients “with a heartbeat,” who often find themselves dealing with the most difficult situations of their lives at their worst moments. Her passion for the practice’s only grown with experience, and now she said she’s in a position to help foster the next generation of matrimonial and family law practitioners.

Recently, she said she’s been proud to take an active hand in promoting women attorneys in the workplace, launching Blank Rome’s Women’s Leadership Summit in 2017. The two-day event, next slated for September 2019, was designed to address challenges in law based on gender and how to overcome them.

Recalling her disbelief at the time she first made one of the Daily Journal’s top attorney lists, Phillips said sense of accomplishment that comes with it hasn’t dulled over the years. She said she wanted to use the platform to celebrate some of family law’s unsung heroes – specifically, the supervising judge for Los Angeles County Superior Court’s family law division, Judge Trent Lewis.

“He’s worked really hard, pushing for settlement and pushing us to get cases ready more quickly so they don’t just lie around. He’s changed the complement of judges so they have far more long cause judges who can handle cases [that run for] more than a day long,” Phillips said. “So I just wanted to give a shout out.”

— Steven Crighton